Page 44 - Constructing Craft

ceramics industry but her first involvement with craft was through needlework. She

did not start making pottery until she was in her forties after her brother installed a
potter’s wheel at his brickworks and brought William Speer, an expert thrower from

England, to operate it. Ironically, Speer, who had unsuccessfully attempted to
establish his own pottery in other parts of New Zealand was in demand later when

the aspiring potters of the new craft movement tried to find teachers of ‘this hitherto
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little-known, and somewhat “romantic” aspect of the pottery craft.’ Speer
reluctantly gave Briar Gardner advice but was ‘often seen to shake his head at her

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amateur attempts to throw.’ Nevertheless, her work, never of a high standard
when compared to the later movement, sold well – better than her critic William

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Speer in fact. Gardner was also prepared to use Māori designs in her work – she
took lessons in Māori design from Trevor Lloyd, an Auckland illustrator and
cartoonist – which may have improved sales. For both Gardner and Jones, pottery

was an odd choice. Home-based interests were the normal type of craft undertaken
by women at this time: ‘It [pottery] was not traditionally practised in the home as it

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was too messy and required special equipment for firing’.

Maria Louisa (Briar) Gardner (1879 – 1968). Photo:
Constance Alice Lloyd. Photo: Alexander Turnbull
Library.

Constructing Craft